At First Things, Joseph Bottum draws attention to a story that government-empowered guardians of the language in the Netherlands are decreeing that the “c” in Christ must henceforth be written in lowercase, apparently lest the traditional capitalization imply some endorsement of His divinity by the Dutch language itself. Sounds like a bandwagon that could get jumped on by plenty of people closer to home … former Senator Danforth, maybe?

It reminds RWB, tangentially, of a story about Ann Coulter. There’s a supposed campaign by a conservative group against her, which has been widely publicized on leftist blogs (like this one). Specifically, someone (his nerdy photo in the story is helpfully captioned “Daniel Borchers, Conservative”) has come up with a litany of complaints against her to try and illustrate that she is not a conservative at all - let alone a Christian one. It’s transparent time-wasting, of the kind that leftist blogs eat up, but one of the items amused me.

She is quoted as saying, on January 3rd, 2005 (no attribution as to where and to whom, mind you) these words about, I guess, the recently passed Christmas season:

Oh, it was so much fun this year, because saying “Merry Christmas” is like saying “*%&$ you!” I’ve said it to everyone. You know, cab drivers, passing people on the street, whatever.

“Daniel Borchers, Conservative,” postulates that this demonstrates that Ann thinks the real meaning of Christmas is, in fact, “*%&$ you!”

Well, no … clearly, when and if she said that, she would have been comically and irreverently drawing attention to the degree to which is has become proscribed to refer to the actual whole point of the “Holiday Season,” or even to actually name the holiday that everyone inwardly knows is really being celebrated (with all due respect to Chanukah and poor old Kwanzaa - those celebrations are not why the banks are closed on December 25th).

In a multi-cultural metropolis like New York City, in particular, one could nearly pass through the entire “season” without seeing the word Christmas (that’s “christmas” for you Dutch readers) even once - unless it were in a church. Ann’s alleged delight in upending the expectations of strangers by actually blurting out the shameless words “Merry Christmas” to all and sundry makes, for me, a funny picture - and I’m grateful to “Daniel Borchers, Conservative,” for bringing it to my attention.

Season’s Greetings, Danny!

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